[License-discuss] Copyright on APIs

[Russell McOrmond]

On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 4:42 PM Lawrence Rosen <lrosen at rosenlaw.com> wrote:

> I again plead with OSI, regardless of what the Supreme Court does with the
> Oracle v. Google case, that OSI never again approve an open source license*
> that  purports to impede in any way by copyright infringement the freedom
> to copy and use any functional API in any open source software. This should
> be OUR requirement for software freedom. You should educate the public that
> this is OUR goal for open source.
>

I would like to add that while the OSI might be a US corporation, Open
Source should be thought of as international.  Regardless of US caselaw or
US law, the OSI should be helping promote software freedom globally.

This should not narrowly be with respect to approved licenses, but also
helping us lobby our domestic governments.  This should include helping
ensure that human or computer interfaces are not covered by exclusive
rights such as copyright or patent.  My decades of interventions with the
federal and provincial governments in Canada on this and related issues
have not been helped by the OSI (or the FSF), which I consider to be a
missing aspect of the mission of promoting open source principles.


I have been writing submissions to various Canadian government departments
and agencies trying to ensure that interfaces are not covered by exclusive
rights.  For instance, my submission to the Competition Bureau in 2003
http://www.flora.ca/competition2003/


-- 
Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>

Please help us tell the Canadian Parliament to protect our property rights
as owners of Information Technology. Sign the petition! http://l.c11.ca/ict/

"The government, lobbied by legacy copyright holders and hardware
manufacturers, can pry my camcorder, computer, home theatre, or portable
media player from my cold dead hands!" http://c11.ca/own
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